Premium IP

Premium IP is a new service available on GEANT/GN2 and some of the NRENs connected to it. It uses DiffServ, and in particular the EF (Expedited Forwarding) PHB (per-hop behaviour) to protect a given aggregate of IP traffic against disturbances by other traffic, so that OneWayDelay, DelayVariation, and PacketLoss are assured to be low. The aggregate is specified by source and destination IP address ranges, or by ingress/egress AS (Autonomous System) numbers when in the core domain. In addition, a Premium IP aggregate must conform to strict rate limits. Unlike earlier proposals of similar "Premium" services, GEANT/GN2's Premium IP service downgrades excess traffic (over the contractual rate) to "best effort" (DSCP=0), rather than dropping it.